Farid Esack, a former professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard University, blamed the West for the Paris attacks in a post on his Facebook page, calling them "your chickens come home to roost."

Esack, who is now a professor at University of Johannesburg and a prominent activist in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, has previously spoken at interfaith events aimed at mutual understanding.

His Facebook post, however, pulls no punches, blaming the West and Israel:

I am not praying for Paris; I am not condemning anyone. Why the hell should I?. I had nothing to do with it. I am sickened by the perpetual expectations to condemn. I walk away from your shitty racist and Islamophobic expectations that whenever your chickens come home to roost then I must feign horror. Stop supporting and funding terror outfits, get out of other people's lands and continents, stop outlawing peaceful resistance such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, to occupations , abandon your cultural imperialism, destroy your arms industry that provides the weapons that kill hundreds of thousands of others every year. The logic is quite simple; When you eat, it's stupid to expect that no shit will ever come out from your body. Yes, I feel sorry for the victims on whom the shit falls. But, bloody hell, own it; it's yours!

Esack's original post on Nov. 14 was edited only marginally; the Nov. 15 version is slightly more bombastic.

Ironically, Esack himself was once targeted by Islamic extremists after he defended women's right to speak at a mosque in Cape Town in the 1990s.

In 2013, Esack protested against the conferring of an honorary doctorate by the University of Johannesburg on President Barack Obama:

Under Obama, the number of US-drone attacks and extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia has risen dramatically, in clear violation of the international law prohibiting extrajudicial killings. He has perfected the art of reducing war to mechanical acts of murder by computer games....And now he is being honoured because he is the first coloured man to get into the position to so?

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